Having conducted it, they were leaving Gibraltar on foot approaching the Spanish border in two separate parties, when Savage saw ahead at eyesight distance McCann and Farrell being confronted and shot dead by soldiers from the Special Air Service Regiment.
[4] Civilian witnesses to the incident stated afterwards that Savage was repeatedly fired upon by the soldier that had run him down whilst he was lying on the ground seemingly incapacitated.
Savage's body, along with Farrell and McCann's were repatriated to Northern Ireland, where a collective IRA-sponsored funeral was held for them on 16 March 1988 at the IRA plot in Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.
As the coffins were being lowered into the ground, Michael Stone, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary, staged a single-handed attack upon the ceremony, throwing hand grenades and firing a handgun at mourners.
One group of mourners pursued the retreating attacker, who continued to throw handgrenades and fire bullets, through cemetery grounds.